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Handel's Water Music for GPO

My favorite Sunday jaunt has become walking across the walking bridge that spans the mighty Ohio between Indiana and Kentucky. About half way across, speakers have been installed that play Handel's Water Music 24 hours a day. The effect is quite admirable - one can almost imagine the music coming from the orchestra's barge down below, and for a minute, I forget that I am 4000 miles from London and 300 years removed from the first performance.

Anyway, I was inspired to try my own performance. Here is the first half of the Hornpipe from the Suite in D. I will probably finish the movement if people like it so far. It's 100% GPO.

Re: Handel's Water Music for GPO

Hello Owen:

Thanks for the lovely work.
I hope you'll forgive me, I love this music, and since it is available for download, I downloaded it and (without changing anything else) I used a little EQ, normalized it and added a little reverb, and this way I liked your work even more.
If you do not like what I done, I understand, tastes and ears are different, it maybe just my failing ears I compensated for.

Re: Handel's Water Music for GPO

CC1 (Modulation wheel) set pretty high - around 100, I think it was, but I like to vary it as I play

Live playing - this is my secret weapon. I try to make the sound brassy as I play. For instance, I separate the repeated notes to make them semi-staccato, so they sound like "Bup bup bup" instead of "Fuuuh fuuuh fuuuh". This latter step is, I think, the most powerful of all.

Use of sustain pedal to separate the legato notes from the tongued ones.

Re: Handel's Water Music for GPO

Thank you, Ted, for taking the trouble to do that, and post the result. Advice like that is the main reason I'm here at the forum.

It seems like you've boosted the bass a bit? Interesting that you added reverb - I already had what I thought was almost too much, but you're not the first person to suggest that I could use some more. I'll have to have a play.

As far as EQ goes, it's one thing I really struggle with. I shudder at all those frequency bands, and I never know where to start.

Re: Handel's Water Music for GPO

Boost and sweep: Set up a fairly narrow band boost in the EQ, and then sweep it across the whole frequency range to look for any particular frequencies that sound bad (and which are thus amplified by your boosting them), typically a resonance of some sort, and then once you've found a spot, change the boost into a cut instead to diminish that frequency instead.

A search for 'EQ sweep' on YouTube should give some examples of how it works.